Pronominal Address in German Sales Talk: Effects on the Perception of the Salesperson

Abstract

Increasing numbers of commercial enterprises in the German-speaking countries are switching from the traditional formal Sie address for customers to the more casual du address. This article reports on a part of an interdisciplinary empirical study evaluating the effect that the address pronoun used towards the customer has on the perception of the salesperson. Respondents were shown short videos of sales encounters and asked to indicate their perception of the salesperson in a guided questionnaire. The choice of either du or Sie as the address pronoun used by the salesperson in the videos did not make a substantial difference to the way the salesperson was perceived by the respondent group as a whole, but some significant differences appeared within sub-cohorts, which were determined by the gender, age group and education level of respondents, and by the industries in which the videos that the respondents watched were set. The overwhelming majority of the significant differences in the perceptions of the salesperson according to the address pronoun used shows that the salesperson using Sie is seen in a more positive light. This suggests that, somewhat surprisingly and counterintuitively, addressing customers with du does not have the general effect of improving the perception of the salesperson.

1. Introduction

Just like other parts of Western Europe, the German-speaking countries have undergone radical societal and cultural change since the 1960s. As far as language is a symptom and an expression of social behaviour, this change is reflected in the development of the German language. Pragmatic elements of language such as addressing behaviour have been described as prime examples of the German language’s development reflecting social and cultural change (cf. Kretzenbacher 1991; Simon 2003a, 2003b). The question of how to address customers in service encounters, first triggered by the import of informal Swedish address practices into the German-speaking countries by Swedish-based international retail chains IKEA and H&M, has been a hotly discussed topic since the 1970s.

Addressing interlocutors in German has the two linguistic expressions of pronominal address (by an address pronoun—obligatory in Standard German—and the agreeing verb form) and nominal address (by name and/or title forms). For the pronominal address of single interlocutors, German offers the alternatives of the second-person singular (2sg) pronoun du with 2sg verbal agreement (used to address children or socially close adults, such as family or friends) or the grammatically third-person plural pronoun Sie with 3pl verbal agreement (the default address for adult interlocutors). Thus, German seemingly follows the T/V address dichotomy postulated by the classic study by Brown and Gilman (1960), in which T stands for a more intimate address form (such as the Latin tu from which the abbreviation is derived) and V for a more formal one (such as the Latin vos). The basic binary T/V opposition can be fine-tuned by other linguistic features to make it perfectly appropriate for the specific social distance between interlocutors in a given situation (cf. Kretzenbacher 2010, 2011a). Such features include elements of nominal address such as first name, hypocoristic, last name, courtesy title (such as Herr (“Mr.”) or Frau (“Ms/Miss/Mrs.”)) and academic or professional title, as well as more T- or V-like salutations. This makes the German address system, as Raymond Hickey (2003) puts it, both binary and scalar at once.

The system of nominal address in German has been constantly changing with political and social developments. This has not only extended to changing titles with changing forms of government in the German-speaking countries, but also to phenomena such as the virtual disappearance of Fräulein (“Miss”) from the inventory of German courtesy titles. In contrast, the basically binary pronominal T/V opposition of du vs. Sie was relatively stable from the time when Sie emerged as the default address for adult strangers around the end of the 18th century (cf. Listen 1999; Simon 2003a) until the 1960s. Starting with the university environment, the T address has since extended into many domains, ousting the V address, although the victory of the German du was never anywhere near as complete as that of its cognate T pronouns in the fellow Germanic languages of Norwegian, Swedish and (to a slightly lesser extent) Danish.

Due to the very different historical developments in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, German is, despite the contiguous German-speaking area in Europe, a distinctly pluricentric language, with national as well as regional standards. Pragmatic phenomena such as address are not exempt from this national and regional diversity, so that nationally appropriate address behaviours in Austria and German-speaking Switzerland are as different from each other as from those in Germany, and there still are differences between the areas of the former GDR and FRG in Germany (cf. Clyne et al. 2009, pp. 129–32; Kretzenbacher 2011b; Norrby and Kretzenbacher 2014; Schüpbach 2015).

Traditionally, the default address form between adult interlocutors in service encounters has been V (pronoun Sie, courtesy title Herr/Frau, professional or academic title if applicable and appropriate, last name) across the German-speaking countries. Even the increased use of the T address among university students and people with a leftist–alternative attitude since the late 1960s did not really change anything in this respect, with the possible exception of small-scale alternative businesses, such as organic food stores and alternative cooperatives. It was the globalisation of (at the time only recently developed) Swedish address practices1 by international brands such as the furniture retailer IKEA and (slightly later) the fashion retailer H&M that first brought the T address in service encounters to the attention of wider circles in German-speaking countries.2 This so-called “IKEA-du” in service encounters has been vividly discussed in German published and social media, and its introduction was rather uneven across media of communication in German-speaking countries (Norrby and Hajek 2011). However, while there is no information on a specific policy at H&M, IKEA Germany now address their customers in all advertising with the T pronoun du, but in direct contact with individual customers, they have returned to the V address, with Sie (Schupp 2017). As a reason for this distinction by contact situation, the IKEA blog indicates that some customers find the du address inappropriate (“unangebracht”). Generally, however, the use of the T address with customers in service and sales encounters is increasing in Germany, according to German media reports (cf. Müller 2018; Hoefer 2021).

While the discussion of address in service encounters in German-speaking media, particularly online,3 is ongoing, serious research (either economic or linguistic) on the topic with regards to the situation in German is scarce. In the field of economics, Brosig-Koch and Heinrich (2018) use the German T address as an example of reduced social distance, which, in their game-theory-based study, shows a positive effect on customer behaviour in some communicative situations. Additionally, in their marketing-based analysis of the study which we are approaching from a linguistic viewpoint in this article, Hensel-Börner and Kords (2021) find that a T address in sales encounters does not provide any advantages for sales. Also rare are linguistic studies on the topic. Apart from two studies comparing (amongst other topics) customer address in Finnish and German online advertising (Ylönen 2003, 2007), the studies from the Melbourne Address Research circle already mentioned above (Clyne et al. 2009; Norrby and Hajek 2011) were the only ones that we found. There are, however, two public surveys that were conducted in Germany in the last decade (GfK 2016; INSA Consulere 2021),4 which allow some comparison with our own experimental results.

The project we are reporting on here was conceived and is being carried out in interdisciplinary cooperation between an economist specialising in marketing studies and a linguist specialising in sociolinguistics and pragmatics. It is, as far as we are aware, the first study—certainly the first interdisciplinary one—dealing experimentally with the perceptions that respondents have of sales encounters with a salesperson addressing the customer either with the T or the V address. Our study therefore had an exploratory character, and it was guided by the following hypotheses:

• H1: In a sales encounter, the choice of T or V address used by the salesperson towards the customer will influence the perception of the salesperson by the customer.
• H2: The type of product or service to be sold is a factor in the influence that the choice of address pronoun by the salesperson has on the way in which they are perceived by the customer, as well as on the probability of a successful sale.
• H3: Given that age, gender as an identity marker and status (including education level) are important variables for address choice (cf. Clyne et al. 2009) and that age, gender and education level are relevant variables in existing surveys (see Section 4, below), they are factors in the way in which the choice of T or V address used by the salesperson towards a customer will influence the perception of the salesperson by the customer.

While H2 will be tested in relation to the probability of a successful sale in a separate publication, the research questions we seek to answer in this article are as follows:

• RQ1: Is a salesperson judged differently according to the V or T pronoun they use to address their customer?
• RQ2: If so, does either the T or the V address make the salesperson appear in a more positive light?
• RQ3: Are there any systematic differences in the perception of the salesperson using the T or the V address according to the particular industry in which a sales encounter takes place, or according to the demographic parameters of the respondents, such as gender, age and education level?

2. Materials and Methods

In order to produce robust experimental results on the perception of a salesperson’s use of T or V address towards a customer in a sales encounter, we decided to perform a strictly quantitative study with an experiment focussed on this specific difference in address pronouns used, set in three industries selling different products/services. Our experiment’s design was informed by methodological discussions in social psychology and sociolinguistics, such as those of Wells and Windschitl (1999) and Schüpbach et al. (2021).

2.1. Materials

The survey was based on questionnaires about videos of the respective initial phases of simulated sales encounters, which the respondents had seen immediately before. The sales literature reveals that the initial few minutes of a one-on-one interaction are the most critical (De Meuse and Erffmeyer 1994) and that the decision as to how to address the customer is made precisely in this initial contact. By focussing the respondents on the specific situation that they had just witnessed, we avoided the methodological problem of being unable to guess which specific situation a respondent was thinking of when they answered a question linked to such a situation-dependent phenomenon as address. We also deliberately avoided asking respondents directly what they thought about the address form used by the salesperson (as in other studies on address in a business context, such as that by (House and Kádár 2020), or having them watch and compare a T-based and a V-based version of the same sales situation, respectively, which would have made them aware that the experiment was about their perception of the address form used. Rather, we asked them about their perception of the specific sales encounter in the video that they had just watched and only added a question on their own attitude towards T or V address much later in the questionnaire. In this way, we had respondents react to the respective address forms used rather than having them tell us how they thought they would react.

We produced six videos with the same male actor (aged 27) playing the salesman and the same female actor (aged 47) playing the customer. Three situations were shot twice each in original settings: one in a shop for sports shoes, in which the customer is looking to buy a pair of appropriate sneakers for a half marathon, one in a car dealership, in which the customer is looking to buy a small car and one in a bank, with a customer having moved from another city recently and looking for a new local bank for her financial services. We chose these three industries because research suggests that there are more T-friendly industries, such as the media or sports goods and sports fashion retail (cf. Clyne et al. 2009, p. 109; and Kretzenbacher 2011a), and more V-friendly industries, such as the financial and legal sectors. The sports footwear shop represents an industry that is considered more T-friendly, and the bank one is considered more V-friendly. We chose a car dealership as a third setting, as in the automotive industry, customers expect to pay a more substantial price in a purchase than at a sports footwear shop (which might make it less T-friendly), but at the same time, the automotive industry that does not have the same image of formality as the financial sector (which might make it less V-friendly).

In the three videos, the dialogue (and the clothes style of the salesman) was kept as appropriate to the specific product/service and setting as necessary, and yet as similar as possible. Differences in the settings caused small differences in the lengths of the video clips (between 0:58 and 1:31 min). Otherwise, the actors were advised to keep their linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour as consistent as possible across the six videos, with the salesman showing what is defined as customer-oriented communication style in marketing research (Saxe and Weitz 1982; Williams and Spiro 1985; Spiro and Weitz 1990; Williams et al. 1990). For each of the three settings, two versions of the scene were shot, with the only difference between them that the salesman addressed the customer with the V pronoun Sie in one version, and with the T pronoun du in the other one (while the customer did not address the salesperson directly at all).

2.2. Participants

The survey respondents were chosen by a convenience sampling strategy and randomly assigned one of the six videos to avoid interviewer selection bias. In addition, we worked with eleven different interviewers, who shared the survey independently of each other. Continuous coordination of the sampling process ensured structural equality of the sub-samples regarding the relevant factors of age, gender and educational level. Immediately after the respondents had watched the video, they were asked to answer a questionnaire. Thus, they were unable to compare videos that only differed in the address pronoun used and, consequently, to become aware of the focus of our study. Additionally, the questionnaire contained more questions than the ones relevant to this article (which will be discussed in another publication, as mentioned above). The respondents’ memory of the video they had just seen could stay fresh for the whole time that they needed to answer the questionnaire, which would have been more difficult if they had seen more than one video.

2.3. Procedure

One part of the questionnaire that is relevant to this article was a specific part with seven-point Likert scales, where respondents were asked to give their impressions of the salesman in the video. The other was a general part asking about demographic data (age, gender, education background) and, finally, their general attitude towards addressing strangers with du.

To indicate their perception of the salesperson in the video they had just watched, respondents were given the incomplete sentence, “The salesperson in the video appears …” (“Der Verkäufer in dem Video wirkt …” in the German original questionnaire), and then 11 adjectives to complete the sentence, each of which was accompanied by a seven-point Likert scale, on which 1 indicated total disagreement and 7 indicated total agreement. The adjectives were attentive (aufmerksam), open (offen), dominant (dominant), honest (ehrlich), empathic (einfühlsam), competent (kompetent), meticulous (präzise), calm (gelassen), trustworthy (vertrauenswürdig), lively (lebendig) and friendly (freundlich). The choice of adjectives was based on Norton’s (1978) foundation of a “communicator style” construct and subsequent further developments of that construct (Dion and Notarantonio 1992; Notarantonio and Cohen 1990). This construct is commonly used in the sales literature to test judgements and perceptions of sales effectiveness. Because each adjective represents a different dimension of the perception, and the construct has not been tested yet for the T/V address of customers, we decided not to aggregate the 11 attributes.

Of the total of 321 respondents, 308 completed their questionnaires and are consequently the cohort we are analysing. A total of 151 of the respondents saw a video with T address, and 157 one with V address. Each of the 6 videos was seen by a group of between 46 and 60 respondents. For the analysis, we divided the cohort of respondents by demographic features into pairs of sub-cohorts of roughly the same size: in total, 161 (52%) of the respondents were male, and 147 (48%) were female. The median age of the respondents was 37. In total, 156 (51%) were born in 1981 or after, and 152 (49%) in 1980 or before, which also happened to make the former group (aged 37 or younger at the time the survey was performed) “digital natives” and the latter “digital immigrants” (cf. Prensky 2001). In order to make our results comparable to those of public surveys (which use very different age groupings; see Section 4), we found that the two age group cohorts we formed with the median age of the total cohort separating them were each large enough to allow for significant statistical results. In total, 154 (50%) of the respondents were tertiary-educated, 149 (48%) had a lower education level and 5 (2%) did not indicate their education level.

We compared the mean scores for each of the adjectives per group to analyse the effect of the address form on the perception of the salesperson. Furthermore, the differences were tested for significance by using the t test.

3. Results

Across the total cohort and across all three industries, there were few differences in the perception of the salesperson using the V pronoun Sie and the one using the T pronoun du.

The only significant differences in

Table 1. Perceptions of salesperson using V vs. T pronouns across the total cohort. Pairs of values highlighted indicate significant differences (p < 0.05) according to the t test. Standard deviations in brackets after mean values.

Feature	Total	V	T
n	308	157	151
attentive	5.36 (1.30)	5.47 (1.26)	5.25 (1.32)
open	5.06 (1.37)	5.04 (1.41)	5.09 (1.34)
dominant	3.51 (1.65)	3.43 (1.73)	3.60 (1.56)
honest	4.69 (1.37)	4.91 (1.31)	4.47 (1.41)
empathic	4.51 (1.33)	4.63 (1.35)	4.39 (1.30)
competent	4.90 (1.44)	5.14 (1.40)	4.66 (1.45)
meticulous	4.51 (1.47)	4.58 (1.49)	4.44 (1.44)
calm	4.56 (1.50)	4.57 (1.46)	4.55 (1.55)
trustworthy	4.74 (1.47)	4.96 (1.49)	4.51 (1.41)
lively	4.32 (1.47)	4.18 (1.50)	4.47 (1.43)
friendly	5.82 (1.16)	5.92 (1.06)	5.71 (1.25)

show a perception of the salesperson addressing the customer with the V pronoun as more honest, competent and trustworthy. The salesman using the Sie address received average scores of 4.91 (with a standard deviation (SD) of 1.31) for honesty, 5.14 (SD 1.40) for competency and 4.51 (SD 1.49) for trustworthiness. For the salesman addressing the customer with du, the average scores were 4.47 (SD 1.41) for honesty, 4.66 (SD 1.45) for competency and 4.96 (SD 1.41) for trustworthiness.

3.1. Results by Industry

If we compare the picture across the three industries, not many significant differences appear within the three settings (

Table 2. Perceptions of salesperson using V vs. T pronoun in the three different industries. Pairs of values highlighted indicate significant differences (p < 0.05) according to the t test. Standard deviations in brackets after mean values.

Feature	Car V	Car T	Bank V	Bank T	Shoes V	Shoes T
n	47	46	50	59	60	46
attentive	5.11 (1.34)	4.78 (1.41)	5.56 (1.18)	5.12 (1.30)	5.67 (1.23)	5.89 (0.99)
open	4.70 (1.41)	4.83 (1.34)	4.88 (1,41)	4.95 (1.44)	5.45 (1.32)	5.52 (1.11)
dominant	3.15 (1.66)	3.57 (1.54)	3.30 (1.74)	3.37 (1.36)	3.75 (1.75)	3.91 (1.77)
honest	4.52 (1.06)	3.76 (1.34)	4.74 (1.41)	4.39 (1.31)	5.35 (1.29)	5.29 (1.19)
empathic	4.26 (1.51)	4.02 (1.22)	4.78 (1.25)	4.29 (1.39)	4.80 (1.25)	4.87 (1.13)
competent	4.70 (1.25)	4.00 (1.46)	4.98 (1.39)	4.41 (1.33)	5.61 (1.39)	5.65 (1.04)
meticulous	4.11 (1.54)	3.87 (1.33)	4.58 (1.37)	4.32 (1.46)	4.95 (1.48)	5.15 (1.25)
calm	4.30 (1.35)	4.61 (1.48)	4.44 (1.49)	4.31 (1.70)	4.88 (1.49)	4.80 (1.38)
trustworthy	4.34 (1.45)	3.85 (1.45)	5.04 (1.50)	4.50 (1.47)	5.37 (1.37)	5.20 (0.93)
lively	3.38 (1.53)	4.35 (1.57)	4.12 (1.37)	4.25 (1.40)	4.85 (1.27)	4.87 (1.28)
friendly	5.77 (1.09)	5.39 (1.50)	5.76 (1.26)	5.68 (1.20)	6.18 (0.79)	6.07 (0.93)

) either:

In the sports shoe scenario, there were no significant differences whatsoever, while in both the bank and car dealership scenarios, the salesperson using Sie was considered significantly more competent. In the bank scenario, he received a score of 4.98 on average (SD 1.39) for this feature, compared with an average score of 4.41 (SD 1.33) for the salesman using du. In the car dealership scenario, V address use earned the salesman an average score of 4.70 (SD 1.25) for competency, with T address use only receiving an average score of 4.00 (SD 1.46). In the same scenario, the salesman addressing the customer with Sie also appeared more honest to the respondents, with an average score of 4.52 (SD 1.06), compared to an average of 3.76 (SD 1.34) for the salesman using du. The only significant advantage of the salesman using du was that he appeared livelier to the respondents in the car dealership setting (4.35 on average, SD 1.57) than when using Sie (average score 3.38, SD 1.53). However, while appearing honest and competent seem to be clearly desirable characteristics for a salesperson, this is much less obvious for appearing lively. It is interesting that significant differences in the perception of the salesperson only appeared in situations that usually deal with larger amounts of money, as opposed to the sports shoe store, which not only exemplifies an industry with a younger and more casual image, but also one in which the financial transactions in a sale can be expected to be less substantial than in the two other industries.

3.2. Results by Gender

When interpreting the results by gender (

Table 3. Perceptions of salesperson using V vs. T pronoun according to gender of respondents. Pairs of values highlighted indicate significant differences (p < 0.05) according to the t test. Standard deviations in brackets after mean values.

Feature	Male V	Male T	Female V	Female T
n	77	84	80	67
attentive	5.21 (1.33)	5.14 (1.34)	5.71 (1.15)	5.39 (1.30)
open	4.69 (1.55)	5.07 (1.30)	5.39 (1.16)	5.10 (1.41)
dominant	3.74 (1.78)	3.76 (1.61)	3.13 (1.63)	3.39 (1.48)
honest	4.67 (1.33)	4.49 (1.38)	5.14 (1.25)	4.45 (1.46)
empathic	4.19 (1.43)	4.37 (1.20)	5.05 (1.11)	4.41 (1.43)
competent	4.75 (1.49)	4.60 (1.38)	5.51 (1.20)	4.75 (1.54)
meticulous	4.16 (1.47)	4.42 (1.38)	4.99 (1.41)	4.46 (1.52)
calm	4.34 (1.54)	4.56 (1.47)	4.79 (1.36)	4.54 (1.65)
trustworthy	4.55 (1.60)	4.57 (1.34)	5.35 (1.25)	4.45 (1.51)
lively	3.96 (1.44)	4.46 (1.56)	4.39 (1.54)	4.48 (1.26)
friendly	5.66 (1.17)	5.57 (1.25)	6.18 (0.88)	5.88 (1.23)

), we need to keep in mind that in order to keep all parameters except the address pronoun used by the salesperson the same between the respective pairs of videos for each of the three industries, we used the same actors for them. Therefore, in all the scenarios, a younger male salesperson was dealing with a female customer twenty years his senior.

For the male respondents, the use of address pronoun by the salesperson only made a significant difference with the feature lively, with the salesperson using T being perceived as livelier (average score: 4.46, SD 1.56) than when using V (average score: 3.96, SD 1.44). The female respondents, on the other hand, had a significantly more positive perception of the salesperson addressing the customer with Sie in terms of five out of the eleven features, all of which seem rather relevant for a salesperson. The female respondents found him more honest (with an average score of 5.14, SD 1.25, compared to an average score of 4.45, SD 1.46 for the salesperson using the du address), more empathic (5.05, SD 1.11 vs. 4.41, SD 1.43), more competent (5.51, SD 1.20 vs. 4.75, SD 1.54), more meticulous (4.99, SD 1.41 vs. 4.46, SD 1.52) and more trustworthy (5.35, SD 1.25 vs. 4.45, SD 1.51).

3.3. Results by Age Group

Younger German speakers tend to be more prepared to use and accept the T address with strangers than older ones (Clyne et al. 2009, p. 56). This is also reflected in the answers our respondents gave to the question as to whether they usually changed quickly from Sie to du with strangers: those who indicated that they did were on average 33.20 years of age (SD 10.96), while those who responded that this transition takes some time for them were 50.84 years old on average (SD 19.42).

In addition to this, given the predominance of the T address in the German-speaking part of the Internet, the younger and digital native respondents might have been expected to have a better perception of a salesperson using du to address their customer. However, this was not the case.

The use of the V or T pronoun by the salesperson did not seem to make much of a difference for the younger cohort, with the exception of a significantly higher value for competency attributed by the younger respondents to the salesperson using Sie (5.37, SD 1.27 vs. 4.91, SD1.43). The older respondents similarly found the salesperson using the V pronoun significantly more competent (4.91, SD 1.49 vs. 4.40, SD 1.44). In addition, they also considered him more honest (4.84, SD1.23 vs. 4.20, SD 1.36), empathic (4.66, SD 1.38 vs. 4.21, SD 1.28) and trustworthy (4.85, SD 1.52 vs. 4.27, SD 1.41) (

Table 4. Perceptions of salesperson using V vs. T pronoun according to the age group of respondents. Pairs of values highlighted indicate significant differences (p < 0.05) according to the t test. Standard deviations in brackets after mean values.

Feature	Younger V	Younger T	Older V	Older T
n	78	78	79	73
attentive	5.59 (1.23)	5.44 (1.23)	5.34 (1.29)	5.06 (1.39)
open	5.15 (1.27)	5.32 (1.23)	4.94 (1.53)	4.83 (1.41)
dominant	3.62 (1.77)	3.67 (1.51)	3.24 (1.68)	3.52 (1.62)
honest	4.97 (1.39)	4.73 (1.41)	4.84 (1.23)	4.20 (1.36)
empathic	4.60 (1.32)	4.55 (1.31)	4.66 (1.38)	4.21 (1.28)
competent	5.37 (1.27)	4.91 (1.43)	4.91 (1.49)	4.40 (1.44)
meticulous	4.68 (1.49)	4.56 (1.48)	4.48 (1.50)	4.30 (1.39)
calm	4.60 (1.52)	4.63 (1.53)	4.53 (1.40)	4.47 (1.57)
trustworthy	5.06 (1.45)	4.74 (1.38)	4.85 (1.52)	4.27 (1.41)
lively	4.18 (1.54)	4.54 (1.49)	4.18 (1.47)	4.40 (1.37)
friendly	6.03 (0.95)	5.81 (1.09)	5.82 (1.15)	5.60 (1.39)

).

3.4. Results by Education Level

Does the level of education play a part in the perception of the salesperson? Our data suggest that this is the case (see

Table 5. Perceptions of salesperson using V vs. T pronoun according to the education level of respondents. Pairs of values highlighted indicate significant differences (p < 0.05) according to the t test. Standard deviations in brackets after mean values.

Feature	tert. ed. V	tert. ed. T	no tert. ed. V	no tert. ed. T
n	85	69	70	79
attentive	5.33 (1.36)	4.94 (1.37)	5.60 (1.13)	5.53 (1.25)
open	5.09 (1.39)	4.68 (1.40)	4.99 (1.46)	5.40 (1.20)
dominant	3.61 (1.83)	3.75 (1.54)	3.16 (1.58)	3.43 (1.58)
honest	4.95 (1.32)	4.29 (1.41)	4.84 (1.32)	4.61 (1.42)
empathic	4.68 (1.26)	4.35 (1.32)	4.57 (1.47)	4.45 (1.29)
competent	5.06 (1.40)	4.43 (1.48)	5.24 (1.41)	4.86 (1.43)
meticulous	4.33 (1.52)	4.12 (1.55)	4.87 (1.42)	4.73 (1.30)
calm	4.64 (1.47)	4.62 (1.53)	4.49 (1.47)	4.47 (1.58)
trustworthy	4.94 (1.51)	4.38 (1.34)	4.97 (1.49)	4.60 (1.49)
lively	4.21 (1.51)	4.45 (1.42)	4.13 (1.51)	4.47 (1.47)
friendly	6.00 (0.93)	5.51 (1.34)	5.81 (1.21)	5.87 (1.17)

).

For respondents without a university-level education, the use of V or T address by the salesperson did not make a significant difference in their perception of the salesperson. The university graduates, however, had a significantly more positive perception of the salesperson using Sie for four out of the eleven features. This did not only apply to features that might have been expected, such as honesty (4.95, SD 1.32 vs. 4.29, SD 1.41), competency (5.06, SD 1.40 vs. 4.43, SD 1.48) and trustworthiness (4.94, SD 1.51 vs. 4.38, SD 1.34). It was also the case for a feature such as friendliness (6.00, SD 0.93 vs. 5.51, SD 1.34, to which the du address might seem more conducive at first glance.

4. Discussion

Our data provide quite a varied picture of perceptions of a salesperson using T vs. V pronouns to address their customer in a sales conversation. From the viewpoint of how the salesperson is received, addressing customers with the T pronoun du rather than the V pronoun Sie does not make much of a difference in general, certainly not a substantial positive difference. If anything, across our total cohort and all scenarios, the few significant differences show a more positive perception of the salesperson using the V address (see Table 1). This is in line with previous surveys conducted in Germany showing that there is a preference of the V address in sales encounters in that country. In 2016, the GfK survey asked respondents, amongst other questions, whether they welcomed the development of the more frequent use of the T address “in contact with salespersons, waiters, etc.” (“im Kontakt mit Verkäufern, Kellnern etc.”). Out of the 1033 respondents, 34.7% said that they did, but 65.3% responded that they did not. The INSA survey of 2021 asked 2017 respondents whether they agreed with the statement, “I appreciate being addressed with du as a customer (e.g., in a shop, in a letter in an email or on the Internet.” („Ich finde es gut, wenn ich als Kunde (z.B. in Geschäften, per Brief, E-Mail oder im Internet) geduzt werde.“). In total, 32.3% of respondents agreed with that statement, while 48.3% did not agree with it.5

4.1. The Different Industries

If we compare the answers across the three different industries (Table 2), the image of the industry and the amount of money that a possible sales transaction would involve seem to play a role in the perception of the salesperson. In the sports shoe shop scenario, a sales environment with a more youthful and casual image, the salesman using the T address did not impress the respondents in any particular way. None of the features showed any significant differences between the salesperson’s uses of the T and V address. On the other hand, in the car dealership scenario, in which a sale would mean a substantial financial transaction, the salesman using the V address was perceived as significantly more honest and competent. The salesman addressing the customer with du was seen as significantly livelier. However, this might not necessarily be a good characteristic for a car salesman, particularly one that is seen as significantly less honest and competent at the same time. The perception of honesty was the only perception showing a significant difference in the bank videos (while arguably being a very important feature for a bank employee). The salesman using the V address was seen as significantly more honest in this scenario. This somewhat corresponds to the only recent industry-specific survey that we were able to find. Leichsenring (2020) quotes a YouGov survey from the same year, where respondents were asked whether they preferred to be addressed with du or Sie by their bank, e.g., on its website or in letters or emails (“Würden Sie von Ihrer Bank, beispielweise auf der Webseite oder in Briefen oder E-Mails, lieber geduzt oder gesiezt werden?”). In total, 55% of respondents preferred a V address and only 10% a T address, while 29% said they did not care either way.

4.2. Gender

The results by gender (Table 3) showed that the male respondents were not very likely to have a significantly different perception of a salesperson according to the address pronoun that this salesperson uses towards a customer. They only perceived the salesman using du as significantly livelier (which, again, might not necessarily be an ideal or important impression for a salesperson to make in many industries). For the female respondents, however, the use of address pronouns by the salesperson significantly influenced their perception of the salesperson. They found the salesperson addressing the customer with Sie significantly more honest, empathic, competent, meticulous and trustworthy. This result matches the frequently mentioned impression among German speakers that the more formal form of address with Sie is perceived as more neutral or even distant, and more respectful (cf. Clyne et al. 2009, p. 45). The difference in perception between the male and female respondents might have been influenced by the fact that all the videos showed a younger male salesperson interacting with an older female customer. However, previous surveys show that the preference for the V address in service encounters is consistently stronger with female respondents than with male respondents. In the GfK survey of 2016, 42.6% of the male, but only 27.1% of the female respondents stated that they welcomed the development of the more frequent use of the T address “in contact with salespersons, waiters, etc.”, while 57.4% of the male, but 72.9% of the female respondents said they did not welcome this development. In the 2021 INSA survey, the gender difference was less dramatic, but still apparent. In total, 35.2% of the male and 29.6% of the female respondents indicated that they were happy to be addressed with du as a customer, while 46.7% of the male and 49.8% of the female respondents said they did not appreciate this. Furthermore, in the bank-specific survey performed by YouGov in 2020 (Leichsenring 2020), 50% of the male and 60% of the female respondents stated that they preferred to be addressed with Sie as customers.

4.3. Age Groups

The results by age group (Table 4) show that—unsurprisingly—the older respondents had a more positive perception of the salesperson using the V address, finding him considerably more honest, empathic, competent and trustworthy. The younger respondents also found the salesperson significantly more competent than when using the T address. While surveys confirm that the acceptance of the T address with strangers decreases with age (Allensbach 2011; GfK 2016), the younger respondents did not have a significantly more positive perception of the salesperson using du in terms of any of the features. The previous surveys define age groups differently, but an increasing preference for the V address in service encounters with increasing age is common across them. In the 2016 GfK survey, the respondents in their twenties were the only age group in which a majority (53.5%) stated that they welcomed the development of the more frequent use of the T pronoun in service encounters. That percentage decreased almost continuously with age (45.6% of the respondents in their thirties, 39.7% in the forties age group, 25.8% in the fifties age group, 30.2% of the respondents in their sixties and 14% of the respondents aged 70 and older). The 2021 INSA survey showed a similar decrease with age in the acceptance of being addressed with the T pronoun as a customer. In the 18–29 age group, 44.4% agreed with the statement that they appreciated the T address in that situation, and 32.7% disagreed with it. Conversely, in the 60-and-older age group, less than a quarter of the respondents (23.3%) agreed with the statement, while 59.2% disagreed with it. In the 2020 YouGov survey (Leichsenring 2020), 44% of the respondents aged 18–24 said that they would prefer to be addressed with Sie as bank customers. In the 25–34 age group, this percentage increased to 46%, in the 35–44 age group to 52%, in the 45–54 age group to 55% and in the group of over-55-year-olds to 62%.

4.4. Education Level

Dividing the respondents into those with a tertiary education and those without one (Table 5) showed the strongest difference between sub-cohorts with regards to the perception of the salesperson. While there were no significant differences in how the respondents without tertiary education perceived the salesperson according to the pronoun he addressed the customer with, the university graduates had a significantly better impression of the salesperson using Sie in terms of four out of the eleven features they were asked about. Perhaps surprisingly, this group also perceived the salesperson using the V address as significantly friendlier. Again, this confirms the trend shown in previous surveys that preference for being addressed with Sie in service encounters increases with the level of education. In the 2016 GfK study, 36.9% of the group of respondents with the lowest education level welcomed the development of the more frequent use of du in service encounters, and 63.1% did not. In the group with the highest education level, 31.9% of the respondents welcomed the development, and 68.1% did not. In the 2021 INSA survey, 41.3% of the respondents with the lowest level of education agreed with the statement that they appreciated the T address as customers, and 30.5% disagreed with it. In the group with the highest education level, only about a quarter of the respondents (27.3%) agreed with the statement, while the majority (57.2%) disagreed with it.6

4.5. Answers to Research Questions

Turning our attention back to the research questions formulated in the introduction, we can answer these questions as follows:

• RQ1: Is a salesperson judged differently according to the V or T pronoun they use to address their customer?

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  This is not generally the case, or at least not to a significant extent. Significant differences that appeared in the total cohort, with regards to the more positive perception of the honesty, competency and trustworthiness of the salesperson using the V pronoun, can also be found (albeit not consistently) across the three industries tested and across demographic sub-cohorts.

• RQ2: If so, does either the T or the V address make the salesperson appear in a more positive light?

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  The three significant differences in the total cohort mentioned above all favour the salesperson using Sie. This is also the case in the overwhelming majority of the significant differences appearing across the three industries tested and across the demographic sub-cohorts.

• RQ3: Are there any systematic differences in the perception of the salesperson using the T or V address according to the particular industry in which a sales encounter takes place, or according to the demographic parameters of the respondents, such as gender, age and education level?

  ⚬

  There were no significant differences in the perception of the salesperson that were consistent across the three industries tested and across the demographic sub-cohorts. Two significant differences that were consistent across the majority of the industries and sub-cohorts were that the salesperson using the V address was perceived as more competent and (slightly less consistently) more honest than the salesperson using the T address.

Our study—the first detailed experimental approach to the phenomenon that we are aware of—had an exploratory character, which is reflected in its methodology, which tries to limit the parameters tested. This study corroborates tendencies shown in previous (much more general) demoscopic surveys performed in Germany. Almost all the significant differences in the perception of the salesperson favour the salesperson addressing the customer with the V pronoun, i.e., the traditional way in which customers used to be addressed in service encounters across the German-speaking countries. Whatever reasons commercial enterprises might have for the change to a T address when dealing with customers, which is described as a trend, at least in Germany (cf. Müller 2018; Hoefer 2021), our survey does not indicate that such a change results in a more positive perception of the salesperson. IKEA, having been among the pioneers of companies addressing their customers with du, have returned to the Sie address in direct contact with customers in Germany (cf. Schupp 2017; cf. Hoefer 2021). This return might be followed by other companies if the lack of a positive effect of the du address for customers, as shown in previous surveys and confirmed in our study, becomes apparent to them, as seems to have been the case with IKEA.

The methodology of our study proved efficient in contradicting (at least for Germany) the impression that addressing customers with du in service encounters might be conducive to sales by improving the perception of the salesperson among customers—an impression that seems to have triggered the change to the use of address in service encounters with many companies. It would be desirable for other surveys with different parameters with regards to industry and salesperson/customer pairing to be performed across several regions in Germany, as well as in Austria and the German-speaking part of Switzerland, in order to complement ours.